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Quick Facts:

Mars Polar Lander Launch: January 3, 1999 Landing & Loss: December 3, 1999 Planned End: March 1, 2000 Launch Mass: 576 kg (1,270 pounds) Lander Mass: 290 kg (639 pounds) Height: 1.06 meters (3.5 feet) Width: 3.6 meters (12 feet) Payload: Deep Space 2 Microprobes Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) Mars Volatiles and Climate Surveyor (MVACS) Stereo Surface Imager (SSI) Robotic Arm & Camera Meteorological Package (MET) Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) Mars Microphone (The Planetary Society)

Deep Space 2 New Millennium Microprobes (Piggybacked with Mars Polar Lander) Launch: January 3-27, 1999 Impact & Loss: December 3, 1999 Planned End: December 4-6, 1999 Mass (each): 3 kg Landing Velocity: 187 - 210 m/s Forebody resistance: 30,000 Gs Aftbody resistance: < 60,000 Gs

Mission Websites:

Mars Polar Lander - Official mirror site provided by The Mars Society Mars Polar Lander (official site) Deep Space 2 Microprobes

The NewsWire: Mars Polar Lander

23-Jun-2001 - Goldin waffles on blame for Mars failures (Florida Today) Recent remarks to two different audiences have some wondering whether NASA Administrator Dan Goldin is dodging responsibility for two Mars failures without looking like he's dodging. In a speech earlier this month to a computing summit in Maryland, Goldin blamed the Mars failures on inadequate computer design tools and said his critics tend to "look for the guilty and punish the innocent." He adopted a different attitude, however, in a recent interview with Florida Today that touched on the 1999 loss of Mars Climate Observer and Mars Polar Lander on separate missions. "As an agency, we are willing to tell the world we made a mistake," Goldin said. "In the case of the Mars program, I believe that the people pressed too hard and they pressed too hard because I asked them to. Clearly we have to push it a little less aggressively." 1-Apr-2001 - U.S. Poised For Return to Mars (Aviation Week & Space Technology) The $297-million Mars Odyssey mission, crucial for NASA's recovery from back-to-back Mars flight losses, is set for liftoff this week on a "do-or-die" mission to validate reforms in the wake of the failures. The Odyssey orbiter will search for "Martian oases" as targets for future U.S./European landers. 26-Mar-2001 - NASA And NIMA Continue Joint Review Of Mars Polar Lander Search Analysis NASA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) today said researchers from the two agencies will continue a joint review of the initial results of NIMA's search for the missing Mars Polar Lander. This analysis is extremely challenging, and has thus far produced no definitive conclusions. 22-Mar-2001 - Mars Polar Lander: NASA and NIMA at Odds Over Spy Agency Findings NASA and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) are moving forward on joint studies to search for the lost Mars Polar Lander. The craft has been missing in action since it attempted to soft-land on the Red Planet on Dec. 3, 1999. The craft was believed to have crashed on Mars, busting itself up across the Martian terrain. But NIMA photo specialists have been poring over NASA-supplied photos snapped by the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft, now in orbit about Mars. As a support agency of the Department of Defense, NIMA has long been associated with interpretation of high-resolution imagery snapped by Earth-circling military spy satellites. 21-Mar-2001 - Experts Find Hint of Mars Lander Fifteen months after the Mars Polar Lander vanished, Defense Department imaging experts have spotted what may be a trace of the spacecraft on the surface of the Red Planet, a NASA official said. Experts at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency have spent months poring over high-resolution images of the region where the Polar Lander was to have set down. 19-Mar-2001 - Spy Agency May Have Located Mars Polar Lander The Mars Polar Lander may have been found -- intact -- by a top-secret spy imagery agency. The National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) has been quietly scanning Mars pictures, looking for the Mars Polar Lander since early December 1999. According to a source close to the NIMA effort, photographic specialists at NIMA think they’ve spotted something. But NASA officials say it’s too early to tell. 11-Jun-2000 - NASA's claim of Mars Polar Lander 'achievement' draws criticism NASA has sparked a new uproar over the failed $165 million Mars Polar Lander program because of a statement in a recently released report. This latest Mars-program controversy revolves around NASA's claim that a "target" was "achieved" because the spacecraft's robotic arm worked in testing on Earth, even though the arm and the entire Lander were lost after crashing into Mars in early December. 12-Apr-2000 - Panel chairman blames NASA management for Mars debacle The House's chief overseer of NASA on Wednesday blamed mismanagement for two failed Mars missions but stopped short of calling for changes in the space agency's leadership. An independent review of the missions, which both failed in 1999, concluded last month that they failed because of inadequate testing, inexperienced staff, poor communication and insufficient funds. But Rep. James Sensenbrenner Jr., R-Wis., said those problems could have been avoided had management paid more attention to tests, employee training and budget management. 7-Apr-2000 - More Grief for NASA: Report Calls Deep Space 2 Microprobes Unfit A recent NASA report found the Deep Space 2 microprobes were unfit for launch but sent to Mars all the same, where they vanished December 3, 1999 along with their mothership, the Mars Polar Lander. 31-Mar-2000 - Fatal Error: Buggy Software May Have Crashed Mars Polar Lander The software problem that likely crashed the Mars Polar Lander into the Red Planet’s frozen ground is striking mainly for its obviousness, according to a software safety expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 30-Mar-2000 - Polar Lander Leg Snafu Discovery a Fluke A software glitch that likely doomed the Mars Polar Lander might have done the same to NASA’s next spacecraft to alight on the Red Planet had the problem not been uncovered by accident, a Lockheed Martin Astronautics official said Wednesday. 29-Mar-2000 - Goldin Accepts Blame for Lost Mars Missions NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin said Wednesday he accepts the blame for the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander spacecraft, saying he had asked the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to do the impossible. 28-Mar-2000 - Mismanagement Blamed for NASA/JPL Mars Failures NASA’s succession of Mars spacecraft failures last year was reportedly the result of government and industry mismanagement, lack of oversight and inadequate checks and balances. Those charges form the foundation of a 57-page analysis, written by an 18-person Mars Program Independent Assessment Team (MPIAT). 24-Mar-2000 - Congress, Mars & NASA (Alabama Live) You don't get a Cadillac for the price of a Yugo. NASA is simply trying to make the most of the money it has. The facts as we know them: On Dec. 3, 1999, the Mars Polar Lander began descending to the surface of the red planet. And that was it. The probe was never heard from again. The spacecraft or its debris, if any exists, is lost in space or on the Martian surface, where recovery is not practical. 22-Mar-2000 - NASA’s Response to UPI’s March 21 Mars Polar Lander story James Oberg of UPI claims that NASA knew there was a problem with the Mars Polar Lander propulsion system prior to the Dec. 3 landing attempt and "withheld this conclusion from the public." NASA categorically denies this charge. 22-Mar-2000 - NASA Denies Cover-up NASA on Wednesday "categorically denied" a report alleging it knew in advance of a fatal design flaw in the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) that disappeared in space in December. 22-Mar-2000 - NASA Denies Validity of News Reports On MPL Failure NASA officials are categorically denying the accuracy of media reports that have been swirling since Tuesday night, which say that NASA knew in advance that the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) was doomed, but kept it secret. 21-Mar-2000 - NASA knew Mars Polar Lander doomed (United Press International) The disappearance of NASA's Mars Polar Lander last December was no surprise to space officials, UPI has learned. Prior to its arrival at Mars, a review board had already identified a fatal design flaw with the braking thrusters that doomed the mission, but NASA withheld this conclusion from the public. The probe was lost while attempting to land near the martian south pole on December 3. 21-Mar-2000 - NASA denies hiding Mars probe flaws (United Press International) A NASA spokesman vigorously denied a United Press International article that NASA knew that the Mars Polar Orbiter was doomed prior to its December crash into Mars but kept the information from the public. Brian Welch, director of public affairs at NASA headquarters in Washington, said "we think the story is whacko in every particular." 14-Mar-2000 - Sloppy management blamed for Mars Climate Orbiter loss (Spaceflight Now) An independent review board blames the loss of NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter last year on sloppy project management, a lack of agency oversight, poor communications and shortsighted engineering. To avoid similar mishaps in the future, the board called for NASA to adopt a "mission success first" approach, one in which the emphasis is clearly on the word "success." 13-Mar-2000 - Lessons of Lost Spacecraft A report by a panel investigating the loss of Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft last fall blames space agency managers for putting too much emphasis on the “faster” and “cheaper” missions instead of “successful.” 24-Feb-2000 - NASA Considers Mars Polar Lander Repeat for '02 Just months after losing a $165-million lander at Mars, NASA is now considering sending a near duplicate spacecraft to the red planet in 2002. 18-Feb-2000 - Mars lander may have had fatal flaw Engineers are looking into the possibility that a flaw in the design of Nasa's Mars Polar Lander (MPL) may have caused its engines to cut off prematurely when it was descending to the Martian surface. 18-Feb-2000 - Mars Polar Lander's Demise May Never Be Known, Flight Director Says Less than one month before a NASA review board is scheduled to report on the failure of Mars Polar Lander, a mission team member cautioned that the cause of the lander’s disappearance might never be known. 17-Feb-2000 - Flaw Found in Mars Lander A flaw in the design of NASA’s Mars Polar Lander could have caused its engines to cut off prematurely while the $165 million spacecraft was descending to the surface, engineers said today. 16-Feb-2000 - Was Polar Lander Doomed By Fatal Design Flaw In a surprising development, an industry source told "SpaceDaily" Tuesday that the Failure Review Board for the Mars Polar Lander has located a fatal design flaw that is regarded as the most probable culprit in the Lander's disappearance last Dec. 3 somewhere over the southern polar regions of Mars. 16-Feb-2000 - A Fatal Design's Single Bit However, during the actual Mars landing, the accidental setting of the ground-contact bit as soon as the legs unfolded would mean that later, when the lander cut itself loose from its chute and switched on its landing engines, it would instantly conclude that it had already landed and immediately switch the engines off again -- falling the remaining 1800 meters to the surface of Mars. 15-Feb-2000 - Polar Lander ‘Signals’ Probably a False Alarm New analysis suggests that two faint signals thought to be from the Mars Polar Lander were likely terrestrial in origin, a Stanford University scientist said Tuesday. A 150-foot (46-meter) radio antenna at the Northern California university picked up the weak signals on December 18 and January 4, reviving hopes at the time that the errant Polar Lander remained alive. The $165 million spacecraft vanished December 3 after plunging into the martian atmosphere at the start of what was to have been a 90-day mission. 11-Feb-2000 - Seeking an SOS from Mars (Christian Science Monitor) At first, Ivan Linscott just didn't think the odd signal amounted to much. The scientist had been using Stanford University's 15-story-tall radio telescope to listen for messages from the wayward Mars Polar Lander. But the only data he had gotten back were one or two arcs that were all but obscured amid a Jackson Pollack tableau of multicolored specks. 8-Feb-2000 - Mars lander eludes searchers on Earth The latest attempt to detect a signal from NASA's Mars Polar Lander has turned up nothing so far, but radio telescopes around the world will make another try this week, engineers said. 7-Feb-2000 - Polar Lander Fails to Take International Call NASA officials said Monday that yet another attempt to rouse a faint signal from the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander has failed, further dashing hopes the $165 million probe will ever be heard from again. 5-Feb-2000 - Antennas around world listen for Mars signal Giant dish antennas in Europe and North America were aimed toward Mars on Friday to begin another attempt to detect what may be a flicker of life from NASA's Mars Polar Lander. It's the largest effort to listen for a signal since Stanford University engineers announced last month that they received an extremely faint signal that could have originated from the $165 million probe. 4-Feb-2000 - Mars Assessment Team Returns To JPL The Mars Program Independent Assessment Team, appointed by NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, returned to JPL in Pasadena this week to continue its review of the Agency's program for the robotic exploration of Mars. 3-Feb-2000 - Quiet please, we're listening to Mars The mighty Jodrell Bank radio telescope will make a sensitive search for signals from the crippled Mars Polar Lander (MPL) on Friday - but scientists hope that journalists will keep their distance. Last week, an array of radio telescopes in Holland tried to listen for the errant Mars craft, but the posse of journalists who descended upon the Westerbork observatory to cover the story rendered the astronomers' efforts useless because of the interference from their mobile phones and satellite uplinks. 31-Jan-2000 - The Silence Of Mars Mission managers for Mars Polar Lander report that radio scientists at Stanford University have not detected a signal from the spacecraft in data they collected last week. Stanford will continue to analyze the data and it is still possible that more detailed analysis might reveal a signal. 31-Jan-2000 - Mars Polar Lander Remains Silent Further attempts to listen for faint signals from the Mars Polar Lander have turned up no trace of the errant spacecraft, the $165 million mission’s managers said Monday. 31-Jan-2000 - Attempt To Hear Mars Lander Fails The latest attempt to receive a signal from NASA's Mars Polar Lander failed, but engineers will make another try this week to contact the probe, space agency officials said Monday. 29-Jan-2000 - Mars Polar Lander Found? (Discovery Channel) A signal detected on Jan. 4 showed characteristics consistent with a message from NASA’s Mars Polar Lander, according to Ivan Linscott of Stanford University, who is supervising ongoing efforts to hear a definitive signal from the lost probe amid background noise from space. 28-Jan-2000 - NASA: Mysterious space whisper could be Mars Polar Lander Managers of the Mars Polar Lander Team say a series faint radio signals captured by a dish antenna at Stanford University are offering some "tantalizing" circumstantial evidence that the spacecraft may be phoning home. 28-Jan-2000 - NASA Seeks International Help in Listening for Mars Polar Lander The effort to hear from the Mars Polar Lander has gone global. On Friday NASA announced it has asked the Dutch, English and Italians for help in determining whether recently detected radio signals could have come from the errant spacecraft. 27-Jan-2000 - Mars lander contacting Dish? - Stanford scientists listening for signs that NASA probe is still operating (The Stanford Daily) In what could potentially be a stunning turn of events for NASA's Mars program, Stanford scientists will determine today whether faint radio signals being picked up by the Dish are originating from the $165-million Mars Polar Lander, which was feared lost last month. 27-Jan-2000 - Nasa waits on new Mars search Nasa scientists say it will be the weekend at the earliest before they know if they have made contact with the Mars Polar Lander (MPL). Hopes of finding the spacecraft were raised this week after a review of data collected by a radio antenna at Stanford University showed a blip in the information record that just might have been MPL trying to contact Earth. 27-Jan-2000 - Polar Lander Still Alive? Space scientists hope that a “whisper” from space might mean that the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft is still alive, even if it is crippled and will never perform its task of looking for water on the Red Planet. 27-Jan-2000 - Controllers Hold Breath for Mars Polar Lander's Last Gasp A last-ditch effort to find signs of the Mars Polar Lander is underway, but it will take more than a week of analysis before members of the mission team can determine whether or not the spacecraft has tried to contact Earth, the mission's flight operations manager said Wednesday. 27-Jan-2000 - Key Scientist Says Mars Polar Lander May Be Alive There’s a 50-50 chance the missing-in-action Mars Polar Lander is resting intact on the surface of the Red Planet. A key scientist on the project named those odds Wednesday, based on reports from radio telescope experts at Stanford University that possible candidate signals from the $165 million lander may have been detected. Follow-up work could verify that it is alive, but sickly. 27-Jan-2000 - Never Say Die After receiving weak signals that may have come from Mars Polar Lander on Dec. 18 and Jan. 4, Stanford radio astronomers are again listening for murmurs from the missing spacecraft. 26-Jan-2000 - Polar Lander Found? A mysterious radio peep — apparently from the direction of Mars — has prompted NASA to fire up a new round of tests to see if the wayward Mars Polar Lander might somehow be alive and operating, officials said today. “This week’s test is a real long-shot, and I wouldn’t want to get anyone too excited about it,” Polar Lander project manager Richard Cook said after a fresh set of radio commands were sent to Mars Tuesday. 26-Jan-2000 - Stanford dish to play 'long shot' on Mars Lander (San Jose Mercury News) Stanford University scientists think they may have heard a faint whistle of life from the given-up-for-dead Mars Polar Lander. Researchers will be listening for a radio signal so weak that if it were a light, it would glow no brighter than a Christmas tree bulb plopped on the Martian surface, 184 million miles away. 25-Jan-2000 - Signals revive hope for Mars lander NASA says it is transmitting new commands toward Mars amid indications that its Polar Lander spacecraft has been weakly trying to phone home. Mission managers say the radio signals, received twice in last two months, are so faint that it’s taken weeks to make them out, and they caution that their expectations are low. Nevertheless, the development has revived hopes for the luckless lander. 25-Jan-2000 - Does Polar Lander Live? Mission managers have decided to send another set of commands to Mars to investigate the possibility that a signal detected by a radio dish at California's Stanford University came from Mars Polar Lander. 25-Jan-2000 - Mystery Radio Peep Raises Slim Mars Lander Hopes A mysterious radio peep -- apparently from the direction of Mars -- has prompted NASA to fire up a new round of tests to see if the wayward Mars Polar Lander might somehow be alive and operating, officials said on Tuesday. This week's test is a real long-shot, and I wouldn't want to get anyone too excited about it,'' Polar Lander project manager Richard Cook said after a fresh set of radio commands were sent to Mars Tuesday. 25-Jan-2000 - NASA checking possibility that Mars Lander sent signal to Earth Mission managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory say the Mars Polar Lander may have tried to phone home after all -- on a bad connection -- and they sent new commands to the lander Tuesday in another attempt to achieve contact with the presumed lost mission. 25-Jan-2000 - Mars Polar Lander: The search continues Since mid-December 1999, the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) onboard the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft has been taking pictures of Mars Polar Lander's landing zone near 76°S, 195°W, in hopes of finding some evidence as to the fate of the spacecraft that went missing during its Dec. 3, 1999, landing attempt. To take these pictures, the MGS spacecraft is pointed a few degrees off its normal, nadir-looking (straight down) path. The first phase of imaging was completed Dec. 24, 1999, but nothing was found. A second, expanded search was requested by the Mars Surveyor Operations Project and was begun in early January 2000. 25-Jan-2000 - NASA Tries to Contact Mars Lander Another attempt is being made to contact the Mars Polar Lander after controllers noticed a very weak radio signal that could have originated from the silent probe, NASA said Tuesday. This week's test is a real long-shot, and I wouldn't want to get anyone too excited about it,'' said Richard Cook, the spacecraft's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. 21-Jan-2000 - Why Did Mars Polar Lander Fail? A Conversation with Donna Shirley NASA is still trying to figure out what caused the demise of the Mars Polar Lander. There are a number of possible fates: perhaps the lander malfunctioned; perhaps it was destroyed by a landing on hazardous martian terrain, or buried in a blanket of soft, deep dust. A NASA review board is expected to release its report on the Polar Lander's loss sometime later this winter. space.com's Andrew Chaikin. Executive Editor, Space & Science spoke recently with Donna Shirley, former manager for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. She offered her perspective on the failed mission. Shirley, now assistant dean of engineering at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, is also a member of space.com's board of advisors. 18-Jan-2000 - Lost Canyons and Missing Corpses On Monday the last long shot efforts to contact the Mars Polar Lander were abandoned. Project Manager Richard Cook said, "The final set of planned commands were sent on Jan. 6 to place the spacecraft in UHF safe mode. 17-Jan-2000 - NASA Gives Up Search for Lost Mars Lander NASA ended on Monday a six-week, intermittent search for its latest Mars mission that was to land on the red planet's surface on Dec. 3 but instead fell out of contact minutes before touchdown. 17-Jan-2000 - Nasa ends search for Mars probe Nasa has abandoned its attempts to locate the Mars Polar Lander, which landed on the red planet last month. Mission leader Richard Cook said the MPL was definitively lost and that all efforts to trace the probe had been halted. 14-Jan-2000 - Mars Polar Lander Investigative Panel Embarks on Two-Month Task The panel investigating the loss of the Mars Polar Lander wrapped up three days of meetings at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Thursday, making its first foray into what will be a staccato, two-month, cross-country look into the spacecraft’s disappearance. 13-Jan-2000 - Scientists have not yet given up on Mars mission (Excite News) After a month of searching, scientists from UCLA and JPL continue to look for the $165 million Mars Polar Lander and are planning for the future of the Mars program. Because of disappointing recent events, NASA is making efforts to restructure its program. After early successes completed with a new philosophy of working cheaper and faster, the program's last two launches have resulted in the confirmed destruction of one spacecraft and the disappearance of the other. 12-Jan-2000 - Be Kind to Mars Explorers The failure of Mars Polar Lander could not have come at a worse time. NASA is plagued by funding difficulties and the tensions over the survival of individual programs that inevitably results from this. The problems of the International Space Station are of Herculean proportions and Shuttle launches are sporadic events. NASA is clearly ailing, and the impact of any further problems is magnified. 10-Jan-2000 - Mars Gets Independent Assessment Sixteen experienced engineers, scientists and executives have been named by NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin to form the Mars Program Independent Assessment Team. The team held its initial organizational meeting at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC on Friday. 8-Jan-2000 - NASA starts investigation of Mars Polar Lander NASA's investigation into its failed Mars missions began in earnest Friday with the naming of a 16-member investigation team and an initial round of briefings at space agency headquarters. In the coming weeks, team members will travel to NASA centers and to the Lockheed Martin Astronautics facility near Denver as they analyze two failed Martian probes and other missions. 7-Jan-2000 - Report: Scientists knew Mars Lander could set down in deep valley Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said Thursday they knew they were proposing to set down the vanished Mars Polar Lander in a deep valley. They said they were still assessing what happened to the craft and had not determined why the Lander failed to communicate. 7-Jan-2000 - NASA Unveils New Panel to Scrutinize Mars Missions A former astronaut who flew on two of the most dramatic shuttle missions of the 1990s is among 17 members of a newly-named independent team of engineers, scientists and executives that will scrutinize NASA's program to explore Mars. 6-Jan-2000 - Lockheed Martin Announces Mars Polar Lander Loss Remains A Mystery After comments from engineers inside Lockheed Martin Astronautics lighted an explosion of controversy about the loss of the Mars Polar Lander, the company publicly denied that there is any way to say what happened to the craft. 6-Jan-2000 - Crippled Mars Lander Could Be in Crater -- NASA The ill-fated Mars Polar Lander, last heard from on Dec. 3, 1999, as it started a descent to the surface of the Red Planet, may be lying crippled in a huge crater, the chief mission scientist said on Thursday. But Richard Zurek, the Mars Polar Lander Project Scientist, said the crater theory was just one of several scenarios being considered by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. 6-Jan-2000 - NASA Poised to Give Up Listening for Mars Polar Lander NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will make one final attempt to hear from the Mars Polar Lander over the next two weeks before declaring the $165-million spacecraft officially lost. JPL started sending commands to the robotic spacecraft Thursday to use its UHF antenna to contact the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor. The Surveyor satellite will then cock its robotic ear and listen for the lander for 11 days, or until Jan. 17. 6-Jan-2000 - Did mile-deep canyon swallow Mars Polar Lander? Nobody knows (The Seattle Times) The vanished Mars Polar Lander could have tumbled down a canyon on the Red Planet, but investigators so far have uncovered no evidence supporting a single explanation for the disaster, NASA said today. 6-Jan-2000 - Mars probe canyon crash theory The Mars Polar Lander (MPL) lost by Nasa a month ago may have met its end in a catastrophic tumble down the sides of a canyon almost a mile deep. 6-Jan-2000 - Mars lander may have broke apart The vanished Mars Polar Lander probably broke apart in a canyon, The Denver Post reported today, citing scientists who suggested the landing site was the reason for NASA's latest failure. The $165 million lander was supposed to touch down Dec. 3 for a 90-day mission to analyze the planet's atmosphere and search for frozen water beneath its south pole. It has not been heard from since it started its descent after an 11-month cruise, and NASA has not offered a reason for the disappearance. 6-Jan-2000 - Scientists say Mars probe probably plunged into canyon (Denver Post) The Mars Polar Lander, silent and missing for a month, probably descended into a nearly mile-deep canyon and then tumbled like a three-legged chair down the ravine's steep walls before breaking apart. 6-Jan-2000 - Did the Mars Polar Lander Crash In A Canyon? NASA Says No The finger-pointing has begun between NASA and Lockheed Martin Astronautics over the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander. The loss of a second spacecraft within three months seems to be stressing the relationship of the once-cozy marriage between the space agency and the aerospace giant. 31-Dec-1999 - Aerial search turns up no trace of Mars Polar Lander Scientists trying to track down the Mars Polar Lander reported this week that an initial search conducted last week failed to find any trace of the lost probe. Scientists at Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego aimed a powerful camera on the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor at the lander's intended touchdown site, but the images it captured showed no sign of the $165 million spacecraft. 28-Dec-1999 - Second Mars Polar Lander Review Board Appointed The Jet Propulsion Laboratory named its own review panel to look into the loss of the Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 microprobes. The 12-member panel, led by John Casani, will examine the most probable root causes for the failure of the two missions, which piggybacked during the nearly year-long trip to their Dec. 3 arrival at Mars. The three spacecraft have not been heard from since landing and are presumed lost. 23-Dec-1999 - Bradbury Foretold Polar Lander's Fate (San Francisco Chronicle) It is clear now that the Polar Lander will not be sending back signals from Mars, the red planet. Something has gone wrong. The scientists don't know what happened to the spacecraft, but a lot of us do know. The Martians got it. 22-Dec-1999 - Children's science book about Mars is largely fiction (Desert News) In the new children's book, "The Mystery of Mars," former astronaut Sally Ride and educator Tam O'Shaughnessy cover much of what is known about the red planet. One of the sad realizations that strike a reader is that people were mistaken about the prospects of civilizations relatively nearby in our solar system. But the saddest thing in the book is the two-page spread near the back, supposedly showing where we are now in our exploration of Mars. 22-Dec-1999 - MPL Search To End Soon NASA is likely to call off in mid-January its search for the Mars Polar Lander. The 165-million-dollar lander and two mini-probes were to have searched for subterranean ice, but have remained silent since December 3, when they pierced the Martian atmosphere near the southern polar region. 16-Dec-1999 - Scientist Has Low Expectations for Lander Hunt NASA's lone Mars orbiter started a photographic search for its latest lost mission at the red planet Thursday. But the scientist who designed the orbiter's camera is pessimistic about the chances of finding Mars Polar Lander, the spacecraft lost at Mars two weeks ago, on the day it was set to land. 16-Dec-1999 - Lost and spaced? (The Why Files) Gotten a phone call from the Mars Polar Lander? We hear the phone isn't ringing at mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, either. The $165-million spacecraft is dead -- a steaming pile of high-tech junk on the south pole of the Red Planet for all we know. 15-Dec-1999 - Mars Polar Lander Mission Status (JPL) Flight controllers for Mars Polar Lander have continued their attempts to communicate with the spacecraft so that they can be certain they have exhausted all possibilities before they conclude their search. While a recovery is still a possibility, the likelihood of hearing from the lander is considered remote at this point. In parallel with the communications attempts, the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) spacecraft will start taking high-resolution images of the landing site to search for signs of the lander. 15-Dec-1999 - The Mars Polar Lander (The Onion) Humor: Leading theories as to why NASA mysteriously lost all contact with the $165 million Mars Polar Lander. 15-Dec-1999 - Probing lost Mars missions to learn what went wrong (Christian Science Monitor) Stunned by the loss of two consecutive Mars missions, some American space scientists say NASA is setting its goals without adequate assessment of the risks. One way to help fix the problem: Consult more scientists. 14-Dec-1999 - Nasa to scan Mars for lost probe Nasa scientists will continue the hunt for their missing spacecraft, Mars Polar Lander (MPL). They will use a powerful camera on board another Mars probe, which is orbiting the Red Planet, to try to locate the lost lander. 14-Dec-1999 - Spacecraft missing on Mars, in toy stores (collectSPACE) In a case of art imitating life, miniature versions of NASA's three most recent Mars spacecraft are missing -- from the toy shelves. Surrounded by rumors, the "Hot Wheels 'JPL Returns to Mars!' Action Pack" may emerge as one of the most difficult to find products this holiday season. 12-Dec-1999 - Look Mars! No airbags (The Australian) FUELLED by its credo of "better, faster, cheaper" – with a heavy emphasis on the latter two – NASA rolled the dice and gambled on two key components of the ill-fated Mars Polar Lander project. The space agency's insistence on doing things on the cheap may have led to two missions – the Mars Polar Lander, including two small, independent deep-space probes, and Mars Climate Orbiter – with a total budget of $US356.8 million ($558 million) being rendered as space junk. 11-Dec-1999 - Mars Lander Cast Ready To Try Again Dozens of computers sit idle in a cavernous room where pictures, sounds and data from the Mars Polar Lander were to be beamed. A Mars or Bust'' sign hangs at one of many empty desks near a TV tuned to a soccer match. 10-Dec-1999 - Silence from missing Mars emissaries will echo for years Today was supposed to be "Sol 7," another full Martian day of work for the visitor from Earth - its robot arm digging, its eyes scanning the horizon, its microphone ear listening for the whisper of frigid wind. Instead, Mars Polar Lander is lost along with a companion satellite that was supposed to have parked itself in Martian orbit 10 weeks ago, taken pictures of the landscape and relayed the data back home. 9-Dec-1999 - Mattel Selling Doomed Mars Mission Toys It’s the saddest toy story ever this holiday season. In a single Hot Wheels "Action Pack," Mattel Inc. is marketing toy models of NASA’s three latest failed missions: the Mars Climate Orbiter, Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 microprobes. 9-Dec-1999 - Editorial: No time to stop venturing out into the universe SOMEWHERE in the cold desolation near the south pole of Mars, apparently oblivious to the frantic efforts of earthlings to contact it, there is a lost spacecraft. Barring some stroke of remarkable luck in establishing contact, we may never know what went wrong on the Mars Polar Lander. 9-Dec-1999 - Mars Exploration: Where To Now The Mars Polar Lander (and its two small piggyback Deep Space-2 probes) have all failed, and without sending any telemetry back which could identify the cause of the failure. 9-Dec-1999 - Reminder from Mars: This is rocket science (Christian Science Monitor) Failure shows how hard it is to explore space. Night after sleep-deprived night, NASA scientists crowded into tiny Room 225, the Mars Operation Center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and scanned the skies for overdue signals from the wayward Mars Polar Lander. 8-Dec-1999 - Mars 'wake up call' for Nasa The suspected loss of the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft could result in the postponement or cancellation of the next trip to the Red Planet. The deputy director of Nasa's Office of Space Sciences, Ed Weiler, described the failure of the $165m spacecraft as "a crushing blow for the Mars programme," that could cause a 2001 Mars launch to be scrapped. 8-Dec-1999 - Mars Lander Topped Bad Year for NASA A grounded space shuttle fleet. An international space station on hold. A crippled Hubble Space Telescope. Two failed Mars probes. One launch delay after another. For NASA, this has been the worst year since the Challenger disaster in 1986. 8-Dec-1999 - Clinton Defends NASA After Mars Lander Loss President Clinton defended the U.S. space program on Wednesday, one day after NASA scientists confirmed the loss of the $165 million Mars Polar Lander. I think it's important not only for the American tradition of exploration. ... We have to keep doing this if we ever hope to know what's beyond our galaxy,'' Clinton said at what was billed as his final news conference of the year. 8-Dec-1999 - Scientists continue attempts to contact Mars Polar Lander as hopes fade NASA to examine entire Mars program, could delay future missions. Though the chance of success is now slim, NASA scientists are still trying to contact the missing Mars Polar Lander, and those efforts will continue for two weeks. 8-Dec-1999 - What Might Have Been (Discovery Channel) It was 3:35 a.m. ET on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day, 1999. Sam Thurman, flight operations manager of the Mars Polar Lander, hesitated before answering an incoming call from Mike Malin, who operates the communications relay system aboard the Mars Global Surveyor. The last reasonable hope that the silent spacecraft might be raised, Thurman knew, depended on this message. 7-Dec-1999 - Loss of lander would prompt review As hope of contacting the missing Mars Polar Lander faded Monday, NASA officials prepared to confront the reality of a costly failure and the likelihood of a top-to-bottom review of the next voyage to the Red Planet. 7-Dec-1999 - Mars Lander emits a deafening silence (Orlando Sentinel) No news again was bad news Sunday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The wayward Mars Polar Lander remained mute for a third consecutive day, missing an appointment to check in with a NASA mapping satellite already in orbit around the Red Planet. The $165 million spacecraft hasn't been heard from since trying to touch down near the Martian south pole on Friday. 7-Dec-1999 - Lessons to be learned from success, failure CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Local scientists said Monday they were disappointed at the apparent failure of the Mars Polar Lander but hope exploration of the planet continues. "Scientifically, this was a very, very interesting and exciting mission," said Bart Lipofsky, a professor of physics and astronomy at Brevard Community College. "It's a serious loss." 7-Dec-1999 - Silence on Mars as NASA's 'last silver bullet' misses mark What controllers billed as their last chance to hear from the Mars Polar Lander passed amid unbroken silence from the planet Tuesday as NASA squarely faced the prospect that the craft was lost. 7-Dec-1999 - Silent Mars: No Message from Alternate Antenna, Either Two more listening opportunities came and went Sunday as NASA scientists waited in vain for a signal from Mars Polar Lander. This latest silence is the most worrisome so far. As a contingency for a malfunction in the direct-to-Earth antenna, the lander was programmed to try to use a different antenna and transmitter to relay a message through Mars Global Surveyor, which is in orbit around Mars. 6-Dec-1999 - Last-Ditch Effort to Contact Mars Spacecraft When the Mars Polar Lander failed to signal it had arrived on the Red Planet, NASA scientists hoped it was resting. Now they fear it is dead. 6-Dec-1999 - Another silent night for Mars Polar Lander scientists NASA didn't get a signal again Sunday from its Mars Polar Lander spacecraft, as hope waned that the probe safely reached the planet's south pole last week. Two grim possibilities remain: The spacecraft is intact but hobbled by potentially serious problems or it was destroyed in a failed landing attempt Friday. 6-Dec-1999 - Hope Fades for Mars Polar Lander With hope fading fast for the Mars Polar Lander, NASA investigators may have to face the possibility of never really knowing what went wrong with the spacecraft 157 million miles from Earth. 6-Dec-1999 - Lessons From the Frontier (Newsweek) The thing to keep in mind," says Benton Clark, chief scientist for flight systems at Lockheed Martin Astronautics, "is that [on any planetary spacecraft] there are around a thousand or so separate individual things that have to be verified somehow—by test, by inspection, by analysis. The pilot on an airplane does 10, 20, 30 things; we have to do a thousand." 6-Dec-1999 - Fears That All Is Lost as Lander Stays Silent (New York Times) A critical attempt to communicate with the missing Mars Polar Lander Sunday brought nothing but more interplanetary silence and the growing fear that the spacecraft and its $165 million mission are beyond recovery. 6-Dec-1999 - Mars 2 - Earth 0 We've been here before. Failure is nothing new in spaceflight and there is nothing that can be done about it. But is the probable loss of the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) an "acceptable" failure? 5-Dec-1999 - Mars Polar Lander Mission Status (JPL) Another telecommunications strategy to hear from NASA's Mars Polar Lander produced no results today, but the mission flight team is proceeding through its contingency checklist in continuing attempts to communicate with the spacecraft. 5-Dec-1999 - Silence From Mars A 10-minute window during which anxious scientists hoped to hear from the Mars Polar Lander closed Sunday without any signal from the spacecraft. 5-Dec-1999 - Lessons From the Frontier (Newsweek) Educators call them "teach-able moments"—instances such as a child's getting into a schoolyard brawl, or cheating on a test, which present an opportunity for him to learn right from wrong and profit from his mistakes. Much to its dismay, NASA spent a weekend filled with teachable moments. 5-Dec-1999 - Silence from Mars: Polar Lander Teams Hunker Down for Long Wait NASA’s Mars Polar Lander and Deep Space 2 spacecraft both remained silent early Sunday ET, nearly 36 hours after the robotic spacecraft arrived on the Red Planet. 5-Dec-1999 - For Deep Space 2 Probes, a Range of Fates Members of the Deep Space 2 mission will continue to listen for the two microprobes for another week, although the odds are now extremely slim the tiny spacecraft survived the violent slam into the surface of Mars on Friday. 5-Dec-1999 - Polar Lander: Narrowing the Possibilities In the wake of Sunday’s failed attempt to relay signals from Mars Polar Lander via a second orbiting spacecraft, the silence from Mars is starting to seem interminable. And in that silence, controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are narrowing their strategies on how to contact the lander. 5-Dec-1999 - Attempt to Hear Polar Lander through Martian Satellite Unsuccessful NASA's first attempt to receive a signal from its Mars Polar Lander via a satellite now orbiting the Red Planet was unsuccessful Sunday, indicating that if the spacecraft survived landing it remains in standby mode. 4-Dec-1999 - Thousands Wait for Signal From Mars (Yahoo! News) While scientists and space fans waited for a signal from the Mars Polar Lander, school principal Douglas Hogg was on a mission to give two dozen students an insider's view of the potential encounter with the Red Planet. The principal, who heads the Pinewood Academy in La Canada Flintridge, took the students to join nearly 2,000 others on Friday who packed an auditorium at Planetfest '99 where they waited for the signal. 4-Dec-1999 - Mars Polar Lander Mission Status (JPL) Mission controllers for NASA's Mars Polar Lander and the accompanying Deep Space 2 microprobes will continue attempting to communicate with the lander and the probes throughout the weekend. Controllers did not hear from the spacecraft in their first few attempts to communicate with the lander and the probes during the first 12 hours after the scheduled landing time. The Deep Space 2 team will try to contact the probes approximately every two hours. The next opportunity for the Mars Polar Lander to contact Earth will be on Saturday evening, Dec. 4 at about 8:30 p.m. PST. 3-Dec-1999 - Exploring an unknown world: craft's Mars landing is today (Miami Herald) It is hard-wired into human consciousness, this yearning to explore, inherited by every generation. Today, it is time for David Paige, walking in the path of his father -- on a planet 157 million miles away. 3-Dec-1999 - Where the Mars Lander will land (explorezone.com) When the Mars Polar Lander touches down today, it will aim for a spot detailed by data collected by the Mars Orbiter's Laser Altimeter device. 3-Dec-1999 - Mars Polar Lander aims for touchdown today If Mars is hiding signs of life, we might have a better chance of finding it starting today. It all depends on a spidery NASA robot probe called Mars Polar Lander, which will try to land this afternoon on gently sloping terrain near the Martian south pole. 3-Dec-1999 - Mars lander misses first chance to communicate The Mars Polar Lander failed to make radio contact with Earth during the first "window of opportunity" on Friday, but NASA scientists said the probe could still have successfully landed near the red planet's south pole. 3-Dec-1999 - No Answer from Mars. No Worries - Yet The Mars Polar Lander should have floated to a soft landing on the Red Planet just after 3 p.m. ET today. At the earliest, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory had expected to hear from the spacecraft at 3:39 p.m. ET. However, that could now be pushed back for minutes, hours, or even days. 3-Dec-1999 - Mars Lander Science Chief Hopes Third Time's the Charm The road to Mars has been a rocky one for Richard Zurek, the man who leads the troops in charge of making Mars Polar Lander figure out the red planet's water history and find answers to dozens of other science questions. 3-Dec-1999 - NASA Headquarters Braces For Mars Landing NASA has more than just scientific instruments riding on its Mars Polar Lander mission: a botched mission could enflame already tense relations between agency headquarters and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory operating the craft. 3-Dec-1999 - Mission to Mars searches for signatures of life (Christian Science Monitor) More than a century ago, H.G. Wells penned "The War of the Worlds," a tale of technologically advanced Martians that invaded Earth in a quest for water. Today NASA turns the tables with its latest conquest of the Red Planet, this time in the form of a trio of pint-size spacecraft that will prospect for the elusive liquid. 3-Dec-1999 - Virtual astronauts invade Mars via the Web (InfoWorld) NASA is giving earthlings the opportunity to invade Mars as the space administration's Polar Lander touches down on the red planet Friday. During the 90-day mission to study water on Mars, virtual invaders will be able to log on to a NASA Web site where they can download Java 2D API, Java 3D API, and a Web Interface for TeleScience application; and access the sights and sounds of Mars transmitted from the Polar Lander 157 million miles away. 3-Dec-1999 - Mars Lander, Microprobes Both Silent A 15-minute chance for NASA to hear from its twin Deep Space 2 microprobes came and went tonight, meaning that the space agency now has three eerily silent spacecraft on the surface of Mars. 3-Dec-1999 - Mars Watchers Hold Breath As Probe Stays Silent (Yahoo! News) The highly anticipated Mars Polar Lander touchdown on the red planet turned into a nail-biter on Friday as the spacecraft failed to call home, leaving scientists wondering what, if anything went wrong. 3-Dec-1999 - Mars lander silent after descent The Mars Polar Lander failed to make radio contact with Earth hours after its presumed landing, but NASA scientists maintain the probe could still have successfully touched down near the red planet's south pole. 3-Dec-1999 - Viking Dreams Became Mars Landing Realities for Flight Director He was just a teenager when the Viking Lander touched down on Mars, but now Sam Thurman is in charge of what could be NASA's fourth successful landing on the red planet. 3-Dec-1999 - U-M grad's idea headed to Mars (Detroit Free Press) Two probes the size of basketballs are expected to slam against the surface of Mars in a test that could revolutionize future planetary exploration. 2-Dec-1999 - MPL Aims for Keyhole in the Sky Simply getting the Polar Lander from Earth to Mars is an extraordinary feat of marksmanship. Once it gets there, after a journey of 430 million miles (700 kilometers), it will face an even trickier task: threading a precise path through the Martian atmosphere. To survive its high-speed atmospheric passage, Mars Polar Lander must pass through a kind of keyhole in the sky called the entry corridor. 2-Dec-1999 - Mars mission managers ready for the unexpected (Nando Times) With two NASA missions to Mars over the past six years having ended in sudden failure, the stakes are especially high Friday for the Mars Polar Lander, and the list of things that can go wrong is long. "It's about as do-or-die an event as they come," flight operations manager Sam Thurman said. 2-Dec-1999 - All systems go to land Mars probe "We are ready," University of Arizona planetary scientist Peter Smith said Dec. 1, speaking for a team of scientists who built cameras arriving Dec. 3 at Mars. 2-Dec-1999 - Sun Helps Mars Jive NASA scientists are using computer systems and software from Sun Microsystems, Inc. to guide the movement of the robotic arm of the Mars Polar Lander as it analyzes the Red Planet. 2-Dec-1999 - Robotic Arm Scoop Ready to Deliver It is likely the most sophisticated half-liter scoop ever built -- the bucket that will dig up dirt from the martian polar surface and dump it into the spacecraft's soil analyzer. 2-Dec-1999 - Glitch May Delay First Mars Microphone Transmission A minor problem only recently discovered with the microphone on the Mars Polar Lander (MPL) spacecraft could delay the first recording of sounds on the Red Planet by a day or more, the microphone's sponsors said this week. 2-Dec-1999 - NASA Foresees Smooth End for Polar Lander’s Journey Mars Polar Lander will land on Friday within a skinny swath of the red planet's "Antarctica," a mostly smooth region alternately ribbed with ridges, pocked with tiny pits, marked with gentle mounds and scored with flat gullies, new images from the Mars Global Surveyor show. 2-Dec-1999 - Mars Polar Lander Acts As Weather Station The Mars Polar Lander carries a weather station that is equipped with a comprehensive set of instruments designed to monitor every phase of the local weather at the spacecraft's landing site. 1-Dec-1999 - Mars craft comes armed to work (The Oregonian) The Polar Lander will touch down Friday with an array of devices to detect water, part of the effort to determine whether life has existed on the red planet. 1-Dec-1999 - Mars Site Is Out of This World (Knight-Ridder) Still two days and 609,000 miles away from an extremely challenging attempt to explore another world, the Mars Polar Lander already is a hit with (cyber)space buffs. One hundred million hits, actually. NASA's special Web site for the mission -- http://marslander.jpl.nasa.gov -- is a hot address, and it's growing hotter every day as Friday's landing approaches. Computer users around the world visited Mars mission sites 10 million times in November and nearly 100 million times this year. 1-Dec-1999 - What Will Mars Whisper Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, together with The Planetary Society, are boosting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration out of the silent movie era into the realm of talkies. They've built the first microphone to fly aboard a NASA spacecraft -- the Mars Polar Lander -- so it can send back audio as well as video after the spacecraft lands Dec. 3 on Mars. 1-Dec-1999 - Mars Lander is Prelude to Piloted Missions When the Mars Polar Lander touches down on the south pole of the Red Planet on Friday, the experiments it will carry out will be paving the way for eventual human exploration of the planet. 1-Dec-1999 - Groundbreaking probes can lay the foundation for further space exploration They sit on a narrow table in Sarah Gavit's office - rugged, ugly-looking chunks of metal that have been heated and frozen to extremes and slammed viciously into the ground. They are rejected versions of NASA's Deep Space 2 probes currently hitchhiking a ride to the Red Planet on the agency's Mars Polar Lander. 30-Nov-1999 - Microphone on craft will capture sounds from Red Planet Listen up - NASA's latest mission to Mars has ears. Mars Polar Lander is equipped with a tiny microphone that will try to capture the first sounds heard from another planet. 30-Nov-1999 - Mars Failure Boosts Lander's Chance of Success Following the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter on September 23, the Mars Polar Lander team completely re-examined the project in an effort to increase the likelihood of its success. Yet despite the double-checking, project officials are still bracing themselves for heart-stopping moments as the lander hurdles toward the martian terrain. 30-Nov-1999 - For Mars scientists, landing will be hallelujah or heartbreak Bob Bonitz was standing in the open doorway of an airplane at 10,000 feet last January when NASA's Mars Polar Lander was flung into space off a Cape Canaveral launch pad. He had intended to jump, rushing down in freefall as the rocket that carried the probe thundered in the distance, but thick clouds thwarted his plans. 30-Nov-1999 - Mars Polar Lander Completes Fourth Course Correction Maneuver NASA’s Mars Polar Lander, just 780,000 miles (1.3 million kilometers) and three days away from its rendezvous with the Red Planet, successfully trimmed its course on Tuesday for the fourth time since its launch. 29-Nov-1999 - Mars landing to test NASA's prowess (St. Petersburg Times) In the past when NASA has had this much on the line, this much to worry about, it has always been about astronauts. Not this time. 29-Nov-1999 - Robotic Science Station Opens Dec 3 Days from now, scientists will witness their experiments complete an 11-month, 137-million-mile space trip to Mars. 29-Nov-1999 - Ballistic Science Hits Mars NASA returns to the surface of Mars with a bang this Friday afternoon Dec 3 (PST) when two penetrator probes piggybacking a bullet ride to Mars smash into the Martian surface to test new technologies. 29-Nov-1999 - Two Mars Missions Set For Climax on Friday If all goes well, Friday will mark the latest chapter in NASA’s ongoing campaign to explore Mars when the Polar Lander and two companion microprobes set down on the red planet. The U.S. space agency hopes to chalk up its fourth spacecraft landing at Mars, a feat it first accomplished with the twin Viking missions in 1976 and again with Pathfinder in 1997. (In 1971, the Soviets became the first to land on Mars.) 29-Nov-1999 - Cooking Class On Mars One of the great mysteries on Mars is this: Where did all the water go? 29-Nov-1999 - Mars Polar Lander a Miser When it Comes to Electricity Run the clothes dryer for 15 minutes. Turn on a window-unit air conditioner for 45 minutes to cool down the living room. Keep a pot boiling on an electric stove for an hour. Any one of these mundane activities requires about 1.5 kilowatt-hours of electricity -- that represents the total amount of power available each day to the Mars Polar Lander during the first part of its mission. 27-Nov-1999 - NASA lander will dig deep to study Mars (San Jose Mercury News) Every time we've visited the red planet in the past, we've slogged through the atmosphere and kicked around some dust to get a superficial view. That's about to change. On Friday at 12:37 p.m. PST, NASA's Mars Polar Lander is expected to settle on the frigid soil near the planet's south pole and start digging below the dusty veneer. 27-Nov-1999 - NASA hopes mission comes crashing down (Virginia News) The success of NASA's latest mission, the Mars Polar Lander, ironically depends on whether two Langley-built components do their job and come apart after crashing into the planet's ruddy, dusty surface Wednesday. 27-Nov-1999 - Microprobe Project Manager Meets the Challenge While the Mars Polar Lander team has relied on the work of previous NASA missions, a daring experiment that came along for the ride had to hoe its own row, the project manager said. 26-Nov-1999 - Events Around Mars Lander Arrival (Washington Post) Key events of the Mars Polar Lander, scheduled to land Dec. 3 on the Red Planet: 26-Nov-1999 - Mars Lander Has Modest Mission (Washington Post) Mars Polar Lander isn't equipped to find life on Mars, won't be arriving in a giant beach ball and doesn't have a little rover to roam in search of rocks. 25-Nov-1999 - Mars landing events and media coverage information (Florida Today) NASA's Mars Polar Lander is due to set down under rocket power on layered, icy terrain near the south pole of Mars on December 3, with the first signal received on Earth that confirms the landing expected at 3:37 p.m. EST. The two Deep Space 2 microprobes that are piggybacking on the lander will impact the planet's surface at about this same time. 24-Nov-1999 - Scientists Holding Breath For Mars Polar Landing (University Science News) Just days from now, scientists will see their experiments complete an 11-month, 137-million-mile space trip to Mars. On Friday, Dec. 3, NASA’s Mars Polar Lander is to make a first-ever landing near a pole of the Red Planet, the south pole.